Real support vital to break toxic spiral

Drew Harris, the deputy chief constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland who was named as the next Garda commissioner yesterday, will know that his two immediate predecessors’ careers came to an end in a way that made Enoch Powell’s famous line about politics relevant to policing.

Powell warned that “all political lives, unless they are cut off in midstream at a happy juncture, end in failure, because that is the nature of politics and of human affairs”.

Former commissioners Martin Callinan and Nóirín O’Sullivan probably regard the circumstances of their career-ending denouements in that unfortunate, regrettable light.

Mr Harris will take up the office in September. An Garda Síochána, the general justice system, the Government, and, most of all, this society cannot afford that his Phoenix Park career ends as unsatisfactorily as his predecessors did.

Everyone in the co-dependent relationship between civil society, our police, and Government knows that, for whatever reasons, An Garda Síochána is not the respected and admired force it once was. Its credibility and probably its moral authority have been squandered as one self-inflicted scandal after another contaminated a once proud force.

That litany of sleaze and dishonesty is probably one of the main reasons Mr Harris will be the first commissioner appointed from outside the force in modern times. This radical but necessary departure will bring its own challenges for him but especially for Government.

If he is confounded by the insular, accountability-defying obstructionism that has almost come to define the force, he must be supported robustly by the Government and especially the Department of Justice — even if that means ending some officers’ careers prematurely.

If Mr Harris, whose father was murdered by the IRA in 1989, is not guaranteed that level of support, one his predecessors may not have been given or sought, he will fail.

The appointment comes as comprehensive recommendations from the Garda Inspectorate on how the force might be reformed languish in that dusty graveyard where so many Government-commissioned reports are interred.

This long-fingering was to facilitate a special commission on

policing that was, last year, asked to consider splitting the force’s security and civil obligations. That report is expected in September, just as Mr Harris joins the force.

He arrives at a moment when its discipline and culture provoke considerable concern. The force’s representative organisations used their considerable leverage to secure pay rises outside public-sector agreements by threatening an illegal strike; financial management at the Templemore training college was at best free range; grossly dishonest breathalyser figures were reported right across the country.

A Policing Authority suggestion that disciplinary action be taken against officers who refused to investigate that fiasco was waved away with a dangerous, intolerable disdain.

Anyone who cares for this society, anyone who cares for An Garda Síochána, knows that this toxic spiral must be broken. To achieve that Mr Harris will need huge, unwavering support — he already has our best wishes